The Post Ukraine Future

Today seems to be a bit of a slow news day so far. Mostly what I'm seeing is commentary on the current situation--the usual American political wrangles, all working up to Election 2022, the Russia - Ukraine conflict with the various ancillary dust-ups (Lithuania being the most recent). Fundamentally, however, little has changed or developed.

This morning, in the course of an interesting Sitrep on the Ukraine conflict, I came across a link at Moon of Alabama (Ukraine SitRep - Lysichansk Cauldron - Sinking Morale - More Provocations) that proved very worthwhile. The link was to a post by a former career CIA officer, Graham E. Fuller, that goes into the post war worldscape, with predictions on the direction history will be taking. Much of what he has to say plays well with the discussions we’ve been having about the changing face of geopolitics.

The short version of who Fuller is:

Graham E. Fuller is a former Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council at CIA with responsibility for global intelligence estimates.

The article:

Some hard thoughts about post Ukraine

Fuller starts out with the usual anti-Putin boilerplate: "Putin is to be condemned for launching this war." On the other hand, he continues, the US is to be condemned for "deliberately provoking a war with Russia"--a war that "did not have to be" but came about due to Washington's call for "clear Russian defeat."

How does one reconcile these two condemnations? Putin launched a war that was deliberately provoked by America for the purpose of inflicting a clear Russian defeat? And in fact Fuller uses some even more pointed language toward the conclusion.

Following the boilerplate stuff Fuller turns to some observations that are fast becoming conventional wisdom. In what follows I've interspersed my own comments as developments of Fuller's basic points:

Contrary to the clearly propagandistic pronouncements--especially from DC and London--Ukraine has lost the war. Full stop. Moreover, the American sanctions war against Russia has backfired spectacularly, hammering Western Europe in particular but also threatening global food shortages. The natural result has been the widening of cracks within the Western alliance. The war on Russia was supposed to feature a completely united West, but instead we’re seeing that the interests of Western counries are ever more clearly divergent. The Anglosphere (plus several Russian - hostile minor nations or nations of lesser importance) have been leading the war effort, while the major Western EU countries (France, Germany, Italy, etc.) have pretty openly dragged their feet. As Fuller observes, it's probably only a matter of time before most of the EU openly returns to Russia as a major energy provider--it's a simple matter of economic logic.

All of this will likely lead to a seriously weakened NATO:

There are already deep cracks in the European façade of so-called “NATO unity.” Western Europe will increasingly rue the day that it blindly followed the American Pied Piper to war against Russia. Indeed, this is not a Ukrainian-Russian war but an American-Russian war fought by proxy to the last Ukrainian.

Contrary to optimistic declarations, NATO may in fact ultimately emerge weakened. Western Europeans will think long and hard about the wisdom and deep costs of provoking deeper long term confrontations with Russia or other “competitors”of the US.

After dispensing with those somewhat preliminary observations, Fuller gets down to brass tacks. Much of the world, including most of Europe, views America as a world power in decline. Worse, America pursues erratic policies whose one consistent thread is the will to retain dominance over the rest of the world--and, in accordance with standard Grand Strategy doctrine, that means dominance over the Eurasian landmass: primarily Russia and China. The result is that the US is increasingly distrusted as an ally, due to its propensity for coercing other nations into wars both military and economic. The last factor--economic war, featuring the use of the dollar's world reserve currency status for imperialistic reasons--has become increasingly troublesome as a result of the all out war launched against Russia. European countries are beginning to understand exactly what Victoria Nuland meant when she famously said, F*ck the EU! Relations with the US will be carefully scrutinized in the future, including reliance on the dollar as the sole reserve currency.

Excerpts:

Europe already perceives the US as a declining power with an erratic and hypocritical foreign policy “vision” premised upon the desperate need to preserve “American leadership” in the world. America’s willingness to go to war to this end is increasingly dangerous to others.

Washington has also made it clear that Europe must sign on to an “ideological” struggle against China as well in some kind of protean struggle of “democracy against authoritarianism”. Yet, if anything this is a classic struggle for power across the globe. And Europe can even less afford to blunder into confrontation with China–a “threat” perceived primarily by Washington yet unconvincing to many European states and much of the world..

... The end of the Ukraine war will bring serious reconsideration in Europe about the benefits of propping up Washington’s desperate bid to maintain its global hegemony.

Europe will undergo increasing identity crisis in determining its future global role. Western Europeans will tire of subservience to the 75 year American domination of European foreign policy. …

We now see how massive US sanctions against Russia, including confiscation of Russian funds in western banks, is causing most of the world to reconsider the wisdom of banking entirely on the US dollar into the future. Diversification of international economic instruments is already in the cards and willl only act to weaken Washington’s once dominant economic position and its unilateral weaponisation of the dollar.

Presumably a guy with Fuller’s background chooses his words carefully. “Most of the world” seems to me to be quite a bit stronger than the safer “much of the world.” With Russia leading the way toward diversification as a safer alternative, and with many other countries getting on board with the whole multi-polar concept, US sanctions could rapidly lose their bite.

At this point Fuller turns to domestic considerations arising from the Russia - Ukraine crisis, but these are considerations that will have a significant effect on how the rest of the world perceives the West in general and America in particular.

One of the most disturbing features of this US-Russian struggle in Ukraine has been the utter corruption of independent media. Indeed Washington has won the information and propaganda war hands down, orchestrating all Western media to sing from the same hymnbook in characterizing the Ukraine war. The West has never before witnessed such a blanket imposition by one country’s ideologically-driven geopolitical perspective at home. ...

Fuller’s observations are fair enough, in context. However, two observations really need to be made. The first is that the utter corruption of the MSM has been on display from the day that Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower. Revelations of media corruption and Deep State manipulation continue to surface as a result of John Durham’s investigations. Moreover, the lockstep of the MSM during the Covid Regime and its abysmally biased performance throughout the Zhou regime have left little room for surprise at the propagandistic “reporting” concerning the Russia - Ukraine conflict. Even more troubling than the MSM performance, however, has been the Big Tech collusion with the Deep State to silence all dissenting voices. None of this has gone unnoticed around the world, to one degree or another. The charge of American hypocrisy when it holds itself up as a guardian of freedom and free speech has never been more deserved.

… But the more dangerous implication is that as we head into future global crises, a genuine independent free press is largely disappearing, falling into the hands of corporate-dominated media close to policy circles, and now bolstered by electronic social media, all manipulating the narrative to its own ends. As we move into a predictably greater and more dangerous crises of instability through global warming, refugee flows, natural disasters, and likely new pandemics, rigorous state and corporate domination of the western media becomes very dangerous indeed to the future of democracy. We no longer hear alternative voices on Ukraine today.

Finally, Russia’s geopolitical character has very likely now decisively tilted towards Eurasia. Russians have sought for centuries to be accepted within Europe but have been consistently held at arms length. ... That the US can split US-induced Russian and Chinese cooperation is a fantasy. Russia has scientific brilliance, abundant energy, rich rare minerals and metals, while global warming will increase the agricultural potential of Siberia. China has the capital, the markets, and the manpower to contribute to what becomes a natural partnership across Eurasia.

Sadly for Washington, nearly every single one of its expectations about this war are turning out to be incorrect. Indeed the West may come to look back at this moment as the final argument against following Washington’s quest for global dominance into ever newer and more dangerous and damaging confrontations with Eurasia. And most of the rest of the world–Latin America, India, the Middle East and Africa– find few national interests in this fundamentally American war against Russia.